The Meaning of Saturday
What Can We Learn from the Day After History’s Darkest Day?
In a moment, everything went dark. With a cry, the world fell silent. The curtain was torn. The Son of God was dead.
For Christians, this is one of history's darkest days. From the moment that sin entered the world in the garden, God planned to sacrifice His Son to redeem humanity. God sent Jesus to the people of Israel to be their long-awaited Messiah, but they rejected and crucified Him on this fateful Friday. For those who followed Jesus during His ministry, there could only be one question on their minds: "Is all hope lost?"
Then, it was Saturday.
Two of the four gospels are silent on the events between Christ's burial and His resurrection on the morning of Easter Sunday. In the gospels that speak of Saturday, Matthew's gospel is the only one that devotes much space to provide an explanation. In Matthew 27:61-66, we are told that Pilate ordered the tomb to be guarded so that none of Jesus's followers could steal His body.
Luke provides less detail in his gospel. He informs us that the believers rested on the Sabbath. Given the turmoil of the previous day, I'm not sure that there was much rest for the believers on this particular Sabbath, but we know little about what they did. As such, we tend to forget about Saturday, instead of skipping directly from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. It is easy for us to lose the drama of this pivotal section of Scripture.
For the believers that lived through this weekend, however, Saturday could not be ignored.
It is reasonable to imagine that they felt despair. When we celebrate Good Friday, we know that Sunday is coming. They did not have this luxury. They had no idea what was going to happen next. Would they be arrested? Would they face the same fate that Jesus did one day before?
Though Jesus told them numerous times throughout the gospels about His death and resurrection, they couldn't understand. Even after the resurrection, Thomas refused to believe that He was alive "unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my fingers where the nails were and put my hand into his side". (John 20:25)
I cannot even begin to imagine how hopeless this Saturday must have felt for them. They couldn't simply turn the page and arrive at Sunday like we can. They had to wait through this agonizing Saturday before they found the hope that comes from the empty tomb.
When we see Good Friday with the knowledge of the coming resurrection, we are not lost in despair. Though it was the darkest Friday in history, we know that Sunday is coming. We know that Jesus conquers death and reveals Himself to be Lord and Savior. As such, we can approach Good Friday with the hope of coming resurrection.
But when we look around our world today, it can feel for us like it did for the disciples during the Saturday between Christ's death and resurrection. It can feel like all we see is evil, and God seems distant. Though Christ has conquered sin and death, it feels like sin and death are closer than ever to conquering us.
Like the first disciples, we have on our Saturday experience. For us, however, that “Saturday” is the time between Jesus’ resurrection and when He comes again in glory at the end of days.
We find hope in our trying times by looking both backward and forward.
We look backward to Christ's resurrection. Every year during the Easter season, we celebrate the fact that our Savior is the One who conquered sin and death. Even when history seemed to be at its lowest point, when the Son of God Himself cried to His Father, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46), there was hope in the coming resurrection. Those words sound like despair, but they are not. Those words, quoted from Psalm 22, point to Christ's victory over sin. The last few verses of Psalm 22 point to the power and work of God. With Jesus's resurrection, sin lost its power, and death lost its sting. Remembering the work of Jesus here on earth gives us great hope even when sin and death surround us.
Not only can we look back to Jesus's resurrection, but we can also look forward to the end of all times when Jesus will come back in glory. There is much debate about how to understand the book of Revelation, but at the end of the day, its central theme is clear: Jesus wins. There was victory on Easter Sunday, but there is an even greater victory in our future when sin and death are defeated forever and Jesus reigns eternally. When we trust in Jesus as our Lord and turn to Him as our savior, we are invited to share in this victory. I can think of nothing that could give us more hope in trying times than knowing the final outcome and that all will be made right.
What can we learn from that dark, pensive Saturday more than two millennia ago? We can know that we have been given the power to endure. Though our current moment feels like a long Saturday, we are not slaves to fear over our present circumstances. Through Christ, we have the freedom to live in hope, knowing that in Him we will have the final victory.
